


It's Not the Way He Walks

by zjofierose



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-02-26
Updated: 2012-02-26
Packaged: 2017-10-31 19:35:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,530
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/347633
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zjofierose/pseuds/zjofierose





	It's Not the Way He Walks

**Pairing** : Sherlock/John  
 **Title** : It's Not The Way He Walks  
 **Prompt(s) used** : "Sherlock/John hand porn: first erotic encounter begins with touching only hands. John's noticed sherlock's elegant hands before"  
 **Rating** : Hard R? NC-17? it's sex, no question, but it's not incredibly explicit.  
 **Word count:** 1500  
 **Warnings** : explicit-ish  
 **Notes/Acknowledgments** : thanks to the ever-lovely[](http://medea-fic.livejournal.com/profile)[ **medea_fic**](http://medea-fic.livejournal.com/) for the fast beta. Also, I really thought about not filling this, since it had been so nicely filled already, but... I couldn't get the prompt out of my head! Sorry!

 

  


Hands, John thought, had always been a kink for him. Freud only knows why, and in the end, does it matter? Perhaps when his father tamped his pipe, the tobacco stains on his long jeweler's fingers sunk into little Johnny's subconscious a little too far. Maybe it was because his mother played the piano, and would sit on the bench with John securely between her thighs as she pounded out the ragtime her own mother used to play, the vibrations rattling his bones and setting him up for a lifetime of chasing musicians. Or blame his first girlfriend, with her cherry-pop nail polish and her delicately chubby fingers that always tasted just a little bit like candy when he sucked them into his mouth. 

Who can say?

It was inevitable that John would notice Sherlock's hands; why, their first interaction was a hand-off, John's revealingly tanned palm to Sherlock's outstretched grasp. How could he not notice, after that? _(He reached for John's phone without hesitation, all thin fingers and lanky, pale, wrists. There was a chemical burn on his cuff, a small hole eaten away at the edge of the fabric.)_ And besides, everything Sherlock does is with his hands, practically. For a man who does virtually no physical labor of any kind, his hands are on (and _in_ and _through_ and _Christ_ ) everything, all the time. Dead bodies, suspicious spills; you name it, Sherlock has a finger in it.

They're long, Sherlock's fingers. Like the rest of him. Long, and bony, and scorched in various places, scarred in others. They're delicate; pretty, though you wouldn't long survive telling him so. It's funny, John thinks, what the sight of them does to him. Usually he goes for men with blunt, strong fingers- he likes wide palms, and a firm grip. He likes to feel caught, to feel pushed; to feel like there's no escape. On the other ( _hah_ ) hand, maybe he gets enough of that with Sherlock elsewhere, enough that he can look his fill, that he can watch as Sherlock manipulates a searing pipette with faultless grace, watch as he caresses the curve of his violin. As he digs a fingernail under the edge of a nicotine patch and peels it up, away from the sticky, translucent skin beneath. 

Sherlock has held John's hand twice; no, three times. 

The first time was for a case; a case of a missing bouncer at a gay nightclub, a case that had nearly killed John while Sherlock smiled and simpered all over him in front of the bar staff, twining his cold fingers with John's, stroking a thumb into the hollow of John's palm to press delicate circles while John desperately focused on the images of a herniated intestine he'd seen that week to keep down the swelling in his pants. John knows they fooled the staff- they'd solved the case, after all; but he's never known how much Sherlock learned from those few hours he spent wrapped around his blogger in all but the most intimate senses of the term. It's in the vast file he keeps in his mind of Things He Won't Speculate On Sherlock Knowing.

The second time began with John holding Sherlock's hand, really, if he's being fair. Sherlock had been hurt at the end of a case, hit over the head with a pan, if you can believe it. He checked out as though he had been hit over the head with a blunt object, but Sherlock hates A&E, and he does live with a doctor, so they went home in the back of the cab, Sherlock forcing away his wooziness by sheer willpower. When the door shut, however, he wilted so fast John grabbed his wrist, holding it while he put his fingers to Sherlock's neck to check his pulse. Sherlock smiled blearily at him, then leaned his head into John's shoulder and closed his eyes, looking green enough around the gills that John spent the next 10 minutes praying silently that Sherlock would not throw up until they reached a loo. It was only after Sherlock recovered that John realized that Sherlock had been holding his hand that whole time.

The third, again, on a case, and they'd been handcuffed together by accident, and then they were running down a street in the dark, and Sherlock had turned to him impatiently and said "take my hand", and John had. He'd had to let go as soon as they'd stopped running, because Sherlock needs his hands, because Sherlock's hands are always, _always_ in motion, but he'd grabbed on to the edge of that ridiculous coat in lieu of fingers, and clung on tight.

It's Sherlock's _hands_ , it's _always_ his hands; waving through the air in his mad gesticulations, digging ferociously through an evidence bag. Gripping the dial of his microscope so tightly the knuckles bleach fair, or the slip of his fingers as he picks a lock. The inexorable tightening of his fingers on the pressure point of a criminal who has yet to give up the information Sherlock will have from him. 

It's his hands again as they come to rest on John's skin. It's apropos of nothing, or maybe everything, John doesn't know and Freud won't tell. It doesn't matter, none of it matters except the drag of Sherlock's calluses against John's skin, the skitter of his nails against John's shirt buttons, the dexterous slide of his thumb as it hooks into the dip behind John's ear and guides their opened mouths together. 

Sherlock's hands are the hands of a topographer, hands that measure every plain, every mound and valley of John's body, charting the shapes of his bones, the length of his muscles and fibers, the exact sounding depth of his every concavity. He is the explorer given free run of a new territory, a surveyor with unmapped vistas, a new-made king who must discover every nook, every hidden delight of his freshly granted sovereign belonging. His fingers lay John out, uncovering every hidden place and spreading him bare to the light before turning him over to examine every reticent curve, every reluctant hollow. What his hands touch, he follows with a tongue, and John arches beneath him as fingers examine the phrenology beneath his too-long hair.

Sherlock is a chemist, John remembers, before he is many other things. He wants to know the outcome of action/reaction, wants to add one thing to another and see what happens. He is unafraid of explosions, and altogether too deft at forming hypotheses. John can only imagine the list of deductions and conclusions being drawn as Sherlock slicks a finger and produces a reaction, but whatever hypothesis was being tested, it must have been successful, because those fingers go on to press, and bend, pulling noises from John that would embarrass him if he had the coherency left to care. He can feel the scrape of Sherlock's nails along the crease of his thigh, raises his eyes to see Sherlock drag a fingertip through the sweat on John's belly and bring it to his lips, tasting the salt as it bites across his tongue. 

John bends beneath those palms as Sherlock presses him into the bed, digits spread wide against John's spine. His fingertips are those of a musician, trained from early childhood, roughened and thick against the delicate skin of John's armpit, measuring the weight of his chest against the precarious balance they've got going. He pulls John against him like an upright bass, back to Sherlock's chest, fingers drifting to press into John's shoulder while his other hand slides to pluck the strings. He drags John through the stanzas, allegro here, then a slight divertimento. His fingers are hard and shaking on John's hip at the apex of the crescendo, a reverent vibrato that will leave a mark John will treasure for days. The resolution is slow, delicate, a brush of quavering palms over over-tightened strings, the pulling of a cover over an instrument too thoroughly played. The audience, if there were one, would rise and leave in silence, too stunned by the profundis to make a sound, leaving the exhausted players to recover themselves in privacy.

Later, when John wakes, the sun breaking across the bed, he is confused; this is not his room. He stiffens, starts to rise, memory flooding back unbidden, but he is stopped by a touch. An arm flings itself across his chest, pinning him determinedly to the mattress as the finger of a beloved traces the bow of his lip, trailing off his cheek onto the pillow as its owner slides back under the tidal pull of sleep.

  



End file.
